“I see phenomenology as basing truth and existence on what we experience, as in seeing "phenomena", and what we do with the observation or what it means to us. That is similar to existentialism, but existentialism does not try to be scientific, and existentialism endorses subjectivity rather than work to resolve it.” -David

I would argue, David, that it runs a little deeper than that in that it does consider the nature of the body and the brain (the logic of it if you will (in that based on pure perception there is no way we could have come to understand that for every external event (noema) there is a corresponding internal event (noesis). We simply would have thought of it in realist terms in which everything is just out there and we are in here. It is that break from experience-in-itself that led to Sartre’s recognition of the underlying nothingness of consciousness –something there is no way he could have perceived directly. Still, we have a lot of common ground here:

“In what way can phenomenology be considered 'scientific' I wonder?” –Steven

“I see phenomenology as the basis of science. For instance, before we had such a vast knowledge base of scientific information, what did people do? They looked at stuff and formed from it what opinion they could. Now I think we get caught up in the significance of the amount of knowledge accumulated and forget the phenomenological origin of science.”

You, Husserl, and Hegel as well:

“It is this process by which science in general comes about, this gradual development of knowing, that is set forth here in the Phenomenology of Mind. Knowing, as it is found at the start, mind in its immediate and primitive stage, is without the essential nature of mind, is sense-consciousness.” -Hegel, Georg W. F. (2010-06-24). The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind) (Kindle Locations 679-681). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.

Now focusing in on an individual point:

“For instance, before we had such a vast knowledge base of scientific information, what did people do? They looked at stuff and formed from it what opinion they could.”

Yes: we have to remember that there was a time when philosophy and science were basically one thing (think Aristotle here. And I would add that it wasn’t just the lack of accumulated knowledge, but the lack of technology as well –hence the change in the philosophy of mind based on neuroscience and its brain scanning technology.

Still, in its time, phenomenology was the best technology we had available to study consciousness. And Hegel goes to great lengths to make it feel like science: those complex (almost mathematical (descriptions of the relationship between the various terminology that we still used well after him: consciousness, being-for-itself, being-in-itself, nothingness, the now which is always behind us the minute we point to it, etc.. (Technologies in themselves. Hegel doesn’t just say; he actually attempts to show. And I, as one who leans to the more poetic side of the philosophical spectrum, can entertain a little forgiveness for his scientific lean. I can even forgive his analytic smugness and dismissal of more poetic approaches, perhaps even chuckle at the cleverness of:

“When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting a veil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all understanding, they are thus God’s beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. This is the reason, too, that in point of fact, what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams.”

That is the preface, as I come familiarize myself with it, seeming like it could have been subtitled the state of philosophy in Hegel’s time.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

“While the embryo is certainly, in itself, implicitly a human being, it is not so explicitly, it is not by itself a human being (für sich); man is explicitly man only in the form of developed and cultivated reason, which has made itself to be what it is implicitly. Its actual reality is first found here. But this result arrived at is itself simple immediacy; for it is self conscious freedom, which is at one with itself, and has not set aside the opposition it involves and left it there, but has made its account with it and become reconciled to it.” -Hegel, Georg W. F. (2010-06-24). The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind) (Kindle Locations 602-606). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.

It happens every time. Every time I start to break into unexplored philosophical text, I get so caught up in decoding the exposition itself that I completely forget to look at the title of the book and extract the wealth of understanding contained in it. It happened with Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. (It took me a while before I finally figured it was about the relationship between Being and Nothingness. How clueless is that?) It took a little less time with Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. But then I went back to the same cluelessness until I zeroed in on the above quote.

I would first note that the title has been translated as both phenomenology of spirit and phenomenology of mind. (And this gives me a little insight into Merleau -Ponty’s choice for a title: The Phenomenology of Perception.) But what can be seen in Hegel’s title is the kind of dualism typical of his time which can best be understood by his fusion of mind and spirit via the German word “Geist”. This, of course, is just an instinctive projection into the complex expositional twists and turns that Hegel uses to make his point, but I can’t help but feel that what he is describing is a dialectic that will lead us to the Absolute via the evolutionary process via the Mind and Spirit’s break from the body.

And we have to give him credit for doing so before Darwin came along.

At the same time, we can see the whole movement that resulted in postmodernism as a reaction to Hegel. We can see both Deleuze’s and Rorty’s descriptions of the folly that can result from dualism (that which gives us a position of privilege over the objects that occupy our space (in that Hegel used the dynamic to give himself the status of having discovered “The Truth”: the Absolute. Hegel talks about becoming. But it is as if he wants to fix it within his scientific system. So we can see why Deleuze would give privilege to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche “who created becoming in the reader” as compared to Hegel who just described it to us.

And once again, it is hard to see Rorty’s giving privilege to edifying philosophy over the systematic as anything else but a reaction to Hegel.

That said, this seems as good a way as any to end my immersion in Hegel’s book. Tomorrow, I look forward to applying my 15 hour immersion/experiment to Professor/Doctor (?) Buchanan’s reader’s guide to the Anti-Oedipus.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

Had a little epiphany last night that I would like to share in a little strategy session with my fellow Free Market Agnostics: the progressives and social democrats and those in general who don’t hear psycho shrieks every time the name of Marx or words like “socialism” are mentioned. We spend a lot of time focusing on our differences with the true believers (the FreeMarketFundamentalists, neo-liberalism , the basement Overmen spurting their Neo-Nietzscheian nonsense in the name of Rand, etc. (only to find ourselves bogged down in the misdirects that the true believers use to divert us from the ultimate a-rational self indulgence that they are working from: white heterosexual male privilege which usually turns into the picked on (by so the so-called Hollywood liberal elite (white heterosexual male burden that they turn to when alone or among themselves. And this notion of being picked on is all over FOX News such as the notion that the rich are being picked on when all they are trying to do is make a buck. I would propose that if we actually look at our common ground, self interest (that is as compared to self indulgence, we may actually be able to lay claim to (outright takeover (two of the cornerstones of the true believer’s argument and put some shine on how tainted by self indulgence and insincere their arguments actually are. In other words, I’m talking about a way to shit in their face with their own nonsense.

I would start with this erroneous notion that that the true believers have some kind exclusive monopoly on the notion of achievement. If we were to ask ourselves how it is the true believers actually see Marx as an actual human who played a role in our history, we might jump to the conclusion of some bearded beast with red glowing eyes and horns sticking out of his scraggly long hair. And as much as I would like to believe that, my educated guess is that they don’t think about it all because most of them know very little about Marx. What they are mainly focused on are his ideologies which present a threat to their self indulgent life styles. But if there ever was a legitimate description of Marx (and I am quite confident in this: Marx was a guy who found what he loved to do and loved it so much that he wanted to create a system in which everyone could find and pursue what they loved: self actualization as Maslow later called it. In other words, Marx was a guy who had a full appreciation of achievement.

The problem with the true believer’s embrace and vision of achievement is that, in reality, it conditions achievement on a lot of contingencies based on mythologies about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It is quick to point out the success stories of people like Whoopie Goldberg or Rappers; but what it fails to recognize is that for every Whoopie Goldberg or Jay-Z, there are thousands of others out there trying to do the same thing only to fail miserably. This obliviousness is what translates into the erroneous notion that if we stop sharing the burden of the less fortunate among us, that burden will somehow disappear. But the only real result of that is that the burden simply becomes localized either through crime or the desperate turning to those close to them who have resources thereby compromising the ability of those who would prefer to actually achieve.

But, of course, due to the theoretical laziness and denial involved in the true believer, this point would be hard to get across. It would be equally hard to get through their individualistic fancy based on Atlas Shrugged that our advancement as a species is now more dependent on the communal model provided by computer programmers in which individuals freely bounce off of one another. In other words, the days of the lone genius are over. Now, in order to get beyond ourselves, we have to create a kind communal momentum that can no longer be restricted by the criteria of profit seeking behaviors. One only need look at the movement of cable TV to see this in which reality TV becomes prevalent because it is cheap to produce while bringing in the same ad revenue. And so much for the notion that only the market can lead to quality; I mean given that quality programming still manages to happen through such enterprises as PRI or the BBC.

The point is that if achievement (even excellence (is what we are after, it is not the true believers that have the answer but the market agnostics. It is us who want to set up systems that will address the needs of the desperate among us so that we are free to achieve. And this addresses yet another mythology that the true believers tend to embrace: this pastoral vision of everyone doing what they do best and exchanging it for what other people do best. This might have been something more than a myth back in the days that Adam Smith wrote about it. But it does little in the days of mass population and the mass production it takes to supply it.

But let the true believers appeal to it all they want. It is only the agnostics that can fulfill it. By creating a society in which the needs of the desperate among us are addressed, by providing, for instance, assistance to a family that is dealing with a handicap child, or assistance to our elderly, or social workers that deal with the problems of the poor, we distribute the burden in such a way that everyone has the time to pursue self actualization (excellence (achievement. And that is while allowing everyone to do what they do best while leaving them, in turn, time for self actualization.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

Once again, being a progressive/liberal has never felt so boring and dry as this first entrance into Rawls via The Laws of the Peoples. A lot of it feels like being told what I already intuited in some rather dry almost mathematical language. I did, however come across a point that gets me beyond myself:

“The last cause [for immigration] is population pressure in the home territory, and among its complex of causes is the inequality and subjection of women. Once that inequality and subjection are overcome, and women are granted equal political participation with men and assured education, these problems can be resolved.”

In this, I believe we can see a crucial element in our evolution as a species from the competitive model (in which our baser impulses put our higher cognitive functions in their service) to the cooperative one: in which our baser impulses see it in their interest to act in tandem with our higher cognitive functions. And let’s be very clear about this: the inequality and subjection of women is an expression of the competitive model. We only need look at Islamic societies to see that. They claim that it is about women being sacred. But ultimately it shows itself to be an expression of fear and the patriarchal need for power and dominance. And this need for power and dominance is what is, in third world countries, driving an unsustainable population growth that lies at the bottom of every other problem we are having: such as manmade climate change and the unwillingness of high wealth to share resources.

We can get some confirmation for this as well as concerns the problem of immigration in America from South American countries. In Mexico, for instance, it is customary for men to keep their women barefoot and pregnant so that they’ll stay home while the men visit the brothels. What results from this, as Rawls points out, is a population pressure that drives Mexican immigration into America. The hypocrisy among American conservatives on this issue is their obliviousness to the issue and tendency to attach gag orders on birth control to foreign aid. And we see that same kind of patriarchal nonsense in such reality TV shows as 19 and Counting which, if you set aside the scandals that surrounded it, was already despicable since the idea was for us to fawn over such a big tight-knit family when all it should have inspired in us was the elimination of the child tax credit after the second or third child. Our population growth (whether it comes from third or first world countries (is unsustainable.

Rawl’s point seems perfectly and profoundly correct in that as long as we delegate women to the role of baby making machines, we will only perpetuate the problem of an unsustainable population growth. However, if we allow women to participate in the power structure on equal terms, we give them an incentive to defer childbearing while being more selective in their role (as one social Darwinist pointed out to me (as genetic gatekeepers.

In other words: when women win, we all win.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

“Not really, D, considering how even early Americans used trade with foreign countries as a means to generate wealth. Our military even fought wars to defend and expand our economic opportunities and leverage. The Spanish American war was HARDLY fought for the principals taught to us in Public Schools, and neither were the smaller scale wars in individual Central and South American countries during and after...such as those in Panama and Ecuador. We were not the originators of Globalism (I think it's safe to say that the British Empire and it's various 'trade companies' were), but we learned it well enough.” -Shawn

In a dramatic reversal from my initial impression of Rawl’s, I find him getting more interesting as I get further into the audio book -that is while I actually read it. Maybe it was the dramatic plot twists or the really luscious sex scenes, or maybe it was just Rawl’s analytic insistence on the precision of terms (Voltaire: if you want to talk to me, define your terms (that is giving me a lot of new terminology and distinctions to play with: that which satisfies the criteria by which I approach any text (in the postmodern sense/hermeneutic of what can be interpreted: a matter of what I can use.

(And I would note how much I appreciate (even if it is not a style I would choose work in and despite my resentment towards Analytic smugness which dismisses continental approaches (the way Rawls (much like Searle (builds his arguments in such a concise way. Rawls seems to work really hard to get his point clearly across to the reader as can be seen in his tendency to repeat important points to his thesis.)

In this case, I would like to focus on the connected terms of the rational and the reasonable. The rational can be primarily focused on what is in the interest of a given individual or group that individual happens to reside in. The reasonable has to do with how a given proposal affects those outside of the individual or individuals that propose it. I return to Shawn’s point to apply the point:

“Not really, D, considering how even early Americans used trade with foreign countries as a means to generate wealth. Our military even fought wars to defend and expand our economic opportunities and leverage. The Spanish American war was HARDLY fought for the principals taught to us in Public Schools, and neither were the smaller scale wars in individual Central and South American countries during and after...such as those in Panama and Ecuador. We were not the originators of Globalism (I think it's safe to say that the British Empire and it's various 'trade companies' were), but we learned it well enough.”

What we see here is what Rawls would consider a misuse of war according to the Laws of Peoples –that is war, according to him, being mainly delegated to self defense. What Shawn is describing here is a perfectly rational use of war in that it serves the interest of the individuals instigating it. We have to put in mind here is that rationality is about what serves the purposes of a given goal. Reasonableness, on the other hand, is about looking beyond one’s self interest and considering the self interest (the rationality (of the other. Therefore, what we see in Shawn’s description is America’s rational application of war while also seeing an equally unreasonable application of it. And this is a direct violation of the Laws of Peoples, that which must transcend the infrastructural technologies (doctrines, laws, etc. (we put in place if we are to be a truly free and just society.

What I see in this is Rawl’s relationship and reaction to his relationship with Robert Nozick (a famous libertarian (who was also a peer and friend to Rawls. Rawls, at one point, directly criticizes the libertarian position which I will try to quote later. But his argument that rationality and the reasonable are both crucial to the Laws of the Peoples while giving the import he does to the reasonable strikes me as a criticism folded into the respect he felt for his friend. And we can see this as well in:

“A reasonably just Law of Peoples is Utopian in that it uses political (moral) ideals, principles, and concepts to specify the reasonably right and just political and social arrangements for the Society of Peoples. In the domestic case, liberal conceptions of justice distinguish between the reasonable and the rational, and LIE BETWEEN ALTRUISM ON ONE SIDE AND EGOISM ON THE OTHER [emphasis mine]”

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

First of all, Shawn, even though I know I’ll regret it, why not concede to a beautiful day in the middle of a cold winter? In other words, hope to see you at the after-party at the café.

Anyway:

“Lmao he *yawned* as though to play being indifferent. Another cover for him not understanding what the hell we're talking about.”

I would suggest that it runs deeper than that. First I would point to a revelation I had in the midst of our discourse:

“We're still waiting for a real argument, John. BTW: San Diego: not a lot of poor people there. I can see what it is you are fighting to hoard. It all makes sense, now.”

California is not a cheap place to live in general. San Diego is even higher end and has a price tag to match. So we can now see what it is John is working so desperately to defend. What we are basically dealing with here is the kind of cheap tactics that people in John’s position have to resort to in order to defend what cannot be defended in a discourse which assumes a goal of working out a compromise that works for everyone involved. Once again: people like John are like teenagers who have been busted at something commonly known to be wrong, but will throw everything on the table in the hope that something sticks.

In this case it is a kind of rock star nonchalance that, while lacking any real content, is meant to impress us with its form. And John’s yawn was an expression of that nonchalance meant to impress on us that we are not part of an in-crowd that he happens to be part of. And this is important because it is not just John engaging in it, it is popular cultural figures as well. On an episode of Bill Maher’s Real Time with Marlee Maitlin as a guest, Maher started to talk about manmade climate change to which Maitlin cut him off and said:

“Surely Bill, you don’t expect me to ride a bike to work.”

What the tactic comes down to is that we are supposed to be so impressed with their sense of entitlement that we should consider our arguments for social justice little more than sour grapes or like we should so desire to be like them as to want to think like them in order to be part of that in-crowd. And this nonsense gets propped up by corporate media. So it’s no wonder they should feel so confident in this tactic when all really works for is other people like them: the very reason it is so dependent on the in-crowd mentality.

This, of course, is delusional as was pointed out in an experiment I believe you reminded me of: one in which subjects were asked to play monopoly and certain individuals were given advantages that, of course, led to their winning. What was interesting was how the ones that won, when questioned about it, ascribed everything to their individual choices.

And this delusional aspect of John is all too clear in the way he resorts to these cheap tactics while acting as if he is making the strongest argument on the string. It’s a little like the circular argument of the sociopath:

I have power because I am right. Therefore, I am right because I have power.

He’s doing well. So he assumes that everything that comes out of his mouth or he writes is doing just as well. He’s like a dumb beautiful blond female at a party describing her “philosofical” beliefs and thinking she must be right and profound even because every male there is listening.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

But being progressive and being liberal are not the same, they have almost nothing to do with each other.

Humans are not really capable of being progressive, of being liberal, of being equal, of being fraternal. This is only possible in a spiritual sense of a sphere like a culture. But first of all, humans are natural beings, and nature is not progressive, not liberal, not equal, not fraternal. So being progressive, being liberal, being equal, being fraternal jsut means being ideological (religious in a modern sense) - not more and not less.

By the way: liberalism and egalitarianism contradict each other. They are an oxymoron, a contradiction.

99% loose, but specifically , what is it they are loosing? I would gather to be incredibly general, and say, their soul. It would become equally desperate an attempt to specify loss, because, the argument turns on basic ontology, of gain vs.loss.

Jack Kerouac declared, ' I accept lostness forever' , a very poignant declaration of content submission, a humble acceptance of the hyper modern reaction to overpopulation, decadence, as a function of popular demand for these values. Maybe there are no other ways, at least not in the present bubbles of reality.

A potential tool (or concept if you will (that is emerging in my present immersion in Rawls involves how we approach ideologies. And what I’m mainly thinking about here is the issue of Capitalism –that is even though it can be (and probably has been (applied to a lot of other ones as well. I would go back to a point made in (I believe (Joe Hughes’ secondary text on Delueze’s Difference and Repetition. In it, he describes three means by which we can confirm our beliefs:

1: the syntactic which focuses on how one assertion follows the other. For instance: because of A, B; because of B, C; therefore, because of A, C.

2: the semantic which focuses on the meaning of what we say and attempts to streamline it. This is the domain of the analytic.

And 3: the existential which tends to deal with reality as it presents itself with all its inconsistencies and deviations from the models provided by the semantic: what is thought of by many thinkers as the ironic.

And what I’m noting in Rawl’s book is a subtle shift (vacillation (between the semantic and the existential, that is while his primary focus seems to be on the semantic in that he seems to be putting a lot of emphasis on clearly defining his terms –for instance: the distinction he’s trying to make between a Law of Peoples and the state. Still, he finds himself always having to bring in the existential, such as the histories he describes, in order to confirm the abstract/semantic models he is presenting. There are even points where he utilizes the existential to put his abstract/semantic models into question.

But I could better make my point by working in my own comfort zone: the ideology of Capitalism. A lot of the time I am talking about and critiquing it, I am working in the semantic/abstract realm of its very logic. This is why, for instance, I can’t help but feel that the present income gap is unsustainable by the very logic of Capitalism since the real buying power created by it can no longer meet (Capitalism being about the flow of money (the general exchange value it produces. For instance, the true believers tend to work from the equation that exchange value=buying power. But if this was true, money would just sweep through the population and everyone would get what they needed. But from an existential perspective, we find that as buying power works towards the top, it doesn’t defuse as much as contract. Rich people, for instance (and while having the same basic needs as everyone else, don’t shop at Walmart which creates a lot of buying power through the people it employs. They rather buy their goods from elite providers who, while getting way more money for their goods than any Walmart employee or any third world slave that made the product sold, employ far less people.

So we have to ask: is the semantic approach as isolated from the existential as it claims to be –as the analytics claim it to be? We (or I (can claim that the semantic is pure in that it strictly works in the terms that define a given term or ideology –in my case: Capitalism. But is there any way of truly full proofing it from the existential?

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

In the preface to his introduction to Schizoanalysis, Eugene Holland makes an interesting and enlightening analogy between D & G’s approach and jazz (as compared to classical music (and soccer (as compared to American football. He points to the improvisational and democratic nature of the formers (those that equate with D & G (and hierarchal nature of the latter: classical music, as compared to jazz, has a strict hierarchy with the composer at top and the strict doctrine of the musical script, while American football also has a strict hierarchy that works up through the quarterback to the coach who is more involved (for instance, in what plays are called (than his equivalent in soccer.

And we get an interesting sense of the sensibilities involved when we focus on the sports aspect of this as concerns the difference between America and other western industrialized nations. Football, being the American obsession it is, we can see in it America’s propensity towards too easily accepting such hierarchies for the sake of a kind of distributed Will to Power. And we see it in the semiology: we have bull-like boys competing, not just through pure will, but craft and cunning as well –that is of the coaches involved. In soccer, that bull-like physique is not required as everything is dependent on the craft and cunning of the individual player which the coach instills in them before the game. In this sense, soccer coaches take the more theistic approach of winding up the clocks of their individual players and seeing what happens during the actual game. Furthermore, in American football, there is the effect of the music: BOOM BOOM! DEFENSE! BOOM BOOM! DEFENSE: expressing the Will to Power. And let’s not forget the totally hot, Capitalism-friendly cheerleaders who look like they could be centerfolds for Playboy: another institution of Capitalistic values. And what I would note here is how republican/conservative women (Sarah Palin, Sarah Coulter, etc.)tend to look like ex-cheerleaders while democratic/liberal women tend to look like college coeds majoring in poly-sci or something: Janeane Garofalo, Tina Fey, Stephanie Miller, etc.

Now, of course, the fact that jazz is primarily an American phenomenon complicates the issue (and I hope to get to that tomorrow (but what I mainly want to get to for now is what America’s obsession with football says about us as compared to other western industrialized nations who are more obsessed with soccer. And one only need go to your common American sports bar to see what I’m getting at here. When you walk into it, you’re immediately bombarded by media: TV's all over the place giving you access to any sporting event you could possibly want while drowning out any thought that could run through your head. (And think here of the competitive mode of evolution as compared to the cooperative one.) And there are, of course, the beautiful soccer moms who look like ex-cheerleaders driven there by their bulky men (likely ex-football players (in 4 by 4 trucks. There is, of course, confidence all over the place.

Now imagine every man there in a uniform and ask yourself how different it really looks than a German pub back in the 1930’s.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

In the preface to his introduction to Schizoanalysis, Eugene Holland makes an interesting and enlightening analogy between D & G’s approach and jazz (as compared to classical music (and soccer (as compared to American football. He points to the improvisational and democratic nature of the formers (those that equate with D & G (and hierarchal nature of the latter: classical music, as compared to jazz, has a strict hierarchy with the composer at top and the strict doctrine of the musical script, while American football also has a strict hierarchy that works up through the quarterback to the coach who is more involved (for instance, in what plays are called (than his equivalent in soccer.

And we get an interesting sense of the sensibilities involved when we focus on the sports aspect of this as concerns the difference between America and other western industrialized nations. Football, being the American obsession it is, we can see in it America’s propensity towards too easily accepting such hierarchies for the sake of a kind of distributed Will to Power. And we see it in the semiology: we have bull-like boys competing, not just through pure will, but craft and cunning as well –that is of the coaches involved. In soccer, that bull-like physique is not required as everything is dependent on the craft and cunning of the individual player which the coach instills in them before the game. In this sense, soccer coaches take the more theistic approach of winding up the clocks of their individual players and seeing what happens during the actual game. Furthermore, in American football, there is the effect of the music: BOOM BOOM! DEFENSE! BOOM BOOM! DEFENSE: expressing the Will to Power. And let’s not forget the totally hot, Capitalism-friendly cheerleaders who look like they could be centerfolds for Playboy: another institution of Capitalistic values. And what I would note here is how republican/conservative women (Sarah Palin, Anne Coulter, etc.)tend to look like ex-cheerleaders while democratic/liberal women tend to look like college coeds majoring in poly-sci or something: Janeane Garofalo, Tina Fey, Stephanie Miller, etc.

Now, of course, the fact that jazz is primarily an American phenomenon complicates the issue (and I hope to get to that tomorrow (but what I mainly want to get to for now is what America’s obsession with football says about us as compared to other western industrialized nations who are more obsessed with soccer. And one only need go to your common American sports bar to see what I’m getting at here. When you walk into it, you’re immediately bombarded by media: TV's all over the place giving you access to any sporting event you could possibly want while drowning out any thought that could run through your head. (And think here of the competitive mode of evolution as compared to the cooperative one.) And there are, of course, the beautiful soccer moms who look like ex-cheerleaders driven there by their bulky men (likely ex-football players (in 4 by 4 trucks. There is, of course, confidence all over the place.

Now imagine every man there in a uniform and ask yourself how different it really looks than a German pub back in the 1930’s.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

“Now, of course, the fact that jazz is primarily an American phenomenon complicates the issue (and I hope to get to that tomorrow (but what I mainly want to get to for now is what America’s obsession with football says about us as compared to other western industrialized nations who are more obsessed with soccer.”

As promised, I want to address this then hopefully (since this is starting to feel like more of a social/political issue (or semiotic similar to Barthes (gravitate back on topic in terms of Deleuze and Guatarri.

(At the same time, in my defense, one can hardly talk or write about any phenomenon without referring to desiring/social production or desiring machines as D & G maps it out. Still, such leeway shouldn’t be abused.)

While jazz is primarily an American invention (which is a sign of hope in terms of the American capacity for open desiring production (we still have to look at how it stands in comparison to American football and take into consideration football’s mainstream status. Jazz (like the blues (basically emerged from an underground sect while football started in the mainstream and remains decidedly there. Furthermore, it was instigated and perpetuated by the less fortunate among us. I would also note that while jazz (as well as the blues (has been adapted by European culture, American football, as far as I know, has not.

That status of classical music, as described in Holland’s analogy complicates my point as well since Europeans have embraced it way longer than Americans have. The only difference is that they (especially the French (have worked their way beyond the hierarchical implications of it. And my point was not to argue that Europeans are somehow immune to the pockets of fascism that can emerge anywhere, including, and most importantly, ourselves. I think here of Zizek’s point in Plague of Fantasies about death camp soldiers who went home to listen to classical music as if to convince themselves they were, after all, civilized people. Nor is this to argue that classical music or American football must necessarily lead to fascism. It is merely to point out that they are desiring machines (forms of social production (that can produce certain effects.

So the point I was trying to get at still stands: the American mainstream obsession with football (and the semiology that surrounds it (and the fascist potential of it (makes America about as in need of Schizoanalysis as any country could possibly be.

That said, I want to finish with a wide swash as concerns D & G’s focus on the schizophrenic as compared to the neurotic. It seems to me that neurosis is what primarily characterizes my once great country as can be seen in the success of Donald Trump. However, this is primarily expressed through the hysteria you tend to see in our rightwing sects, neo-liberals, and lately (as compared to the past when they acted as check and balance to excesses of the left in a reasonable manner (the republicans.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

“What is the root of these assaults on our autonomy? Why do intellectuals and scientists feel such a strong impulse to show us that we are powerless, controlled by forces beyond our own control?” –From Steve Taylor’s Reclaiming Freedom

From the perspective of one who has gotten as deep into continental philosophy as I have (and I mean it: damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway! (I would argue that it is primarily a reaction to Capitalism and the Free Will alibi of FreeMarketFundamentalism as expressed through libertarianism in its political/social form.

A lot of it comes out of the materialist approaches of the likes of Deleuze and Foucault, as well as the American Pragmatism of Rorty: that which has the agenda of opening up the discourse by undermining the old platonic hierarchies based on transcendent principles. The idea is, as Deleuze and Guattarri point out, to engage in a communal creative act based on ourselves as nodal points in a vast system of exchanged energies.

In that sense, we are perfectly free to take it in a conditional way. All we have to do is hypothetically accept the materialist perspective for the sake of a kind of democratic creative discourse that works outside of the perimeters of the Capitalist language game, that defined by the hardcore materialist’s emphasis on a language game defined by the criterion of the scientific method.

That said, I want to return to a point made by Boyd:

“The first question to be answered is: Who or what is running the show? In Part 1 I will attempt to explain human decision-making without the need for a hidden homunculus. Part 2 will then go on to look at how the brain can operate within this environment to generate the impression of an individual being driven by a highly conscious self.”

I ran into a similar problem with Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. He, like Boyd, offered an alternative explanation to the Cartesian Theater with the multiple drafts theory. And like Boyd’s, it did provide a reasonable alternative to the homunculus. But the problem with this can be seen in Dennett’s failure to dismiss the Cartesian Theater as much as just make the actors the spectators as well.

They, in their analytic zeal, assume, because one of their kind managed to hit a nerve with it, that the possibility of Free Will is somehow dependent on the homunculus dynamic, that their dismissal of it is somehow the final word on the subject. But why would we need it when all we really need is the perceiving thing projecting out of the body participating in the environment it is engaging with and adapting to? Why would the actors working in the Cartesian Theater be any less valid perceiving things than an audience?

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

Today, after watching Ridley Scott’s version of the Moses story, Exodus: Gods and Kings, a few connections started to form –mainly around my recent scratching at the surface of Spinoza’s explanation of God as substance. But before I go into this, I need to make clear that I, as far as my beliefs, am an agnostic: an atheist that hedges their bets. Therefore, consider all the following talk of God as a compositional convenience (given the material I am working with (and metaphorical in nature.

I would also start by pointing out something brought to my attention during my short tryst with the Unitarian church. It was something Scott got close to when his version of the burning bush described God as saying “I am” as compared to the “I am God” that we’re traditionally told it said. What connected with that is something one of the guest speakers at the church explained. He pointed, first of all, to the difficulty of translating that particular passage. He then went on to point out that many experts came to realize that what was actually being said was “I am Being”. And here we get a translation that is more philosophy-friendly if you will, specifically towards the philosophy of Spinoza.

And I would point out that my interpretation of this has to do with my inability, at this point in my process, to separate Spinoza’s notion of substance and the concept of Being. Furthermore, I cannot help but bring in Spinoza’s understanding of God as not acting out of Free Will (as such would suggest that God could make other choices which would put into question His perfectness (but its very nature in terms of the plagues that God incurred on Egypt and Ramses.

What makes the connections so exciting to me is that you can’t help but feel that Scott may have been acting from some influence from Spinoza in that everything seemed to be resulting from the nature of Egypt and Ramses at the time rooted in and as an expression of the Spinozian understanding of God always acting out of its own nature.

What makes it even more exciting for me (that which I may get an article out of (is the connection we can see between what happened in Egypt and what we are dealing with as concerns man-made climate change. We first have to consider the deterministic nature of the relationship between God and man in Spinoza’s model in that both are acting out of the nature of God. In this case though, it is as if we are acting out of some conflict within the nature of God in order to resolve it.

The thing that should scare us, though, is how that process of resolution will affect our individual lives or the individual lives of our children and grandchildren.

That said, what I also hope to bring into this is the fractal causality at work in Spinoza’s Substance as well as Deleuze and Guatarri’s BwO as compared to a linear one which allowed Spinoza, not having gotten past it (think Newton, to talk about infinite regress as did Deleuze.

And I would also point to the influence the Moses story (being a Jewish one (might have been having on Spinoza without him realizing it. It may well have been that the Jewish church excommunicated him for understanding the story of Moses better than they did.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

“Spinoza subscribed to a modified form of Descartes’ method, and drew the standard philosophical conclusion. He became convinced that the fundamental premises of human knowledge must be established, not by experience but by reason, since reason alone can provide insight into the essence of things – an essence being precisely that which is captured in a ‘clear and distinct idea’.” -Scruton, Roger (2002-05-30). Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Kindle Locations 701-703). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

And here we see the shortcoming and circular nature of the rationalist approach. Ultimately, what this argument comes down to is the assumption that such essences are found rather than made. If they are made, which the rationalist approach gives us reason to suspect, then the argument turns against itself in that the essences are attributed to a given subject rather than imminent within them. If they are found, then we see the rationalist approach fully dependent on the empirical approach -in other words: experience. And I would also point out that what I’m fumbling around with here gets at the reason that while Anselm’s and Spinoza’s argument for God are convincing within themselves (within their given systems, many of us have ended up agnostic, if not outright atheist.

It basically comes down to something pointed out to me in (I believe (Joe Hughes’ readers guide to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, that there are 3 approaches to making an argument:

1: the syntactic as can be seen in the argument:

A=BB=CTherefore A=C

2: the semantic as can be seen in Aristotle’s syllogisms:

Men are rational animals.Socrates is a man.Therefore, Socrates is a rational animal.

(And I would note how even here the semantic is dependent on the next method, the Existential which involves experience. )

And, finally, 3: the existential in which we test our conceptual systems against reality itself.

And by recognizing these three, we can more accurately analyze the disconnect between Anselm’s and Spinoza strong arguments for God and our willingness to accept them. What we see here is how their arguments work perfectly within the syntactic and semantic (the domain of the rationalist approach (while failing to make the existential leap. We see a similar problem at work in paradoxes such as Zeno’s arrow which, while convincing, fails to inspire us to go prancing around between an archer and their target.

Therefore, what we have to do is make the existential leap of putting Spinoza (as well as Anselm (in their historical context. We have to recognize that, at the time, mathematics was an emerging and exciting technology that inspired Spinoza, in his enthusiasm, to put a little more faith in the geometrical method than it actually warranted. At the same time, I would hesitate to pass off Spinoza’s effort as irrelevant. As Scruton later points out:

“(The proof of the second proposition involves, when traced back to its original axioms, something like 100 steps; this idea of a mathematics of laughter seems less strange when set beside Spinoza’s view that merriment is more easily conceived than observed.)”

We can easily see here the justification for the rationalist approach. It is clearly easier to form concepts about merriment and work with that than actually observe it and form any workable proposition about it. It may even be, if you think about it, impossible without mental concepts about it.

I mean think about it: can we ever really think about a moment when we’re actually in it? Don’t the two seem inherently exclusive?

And to justify putting this on the Pragmatic board:

We can also see the import of the pragmatic truth test (that which just works (as a synthesis of the traditional deductive and inductive truth tests in that it made both valid ways to work and added something more. This, of course, would give some validation to the deductive tendency to appeal to the inductive and resolve the inherent self contradiction in doing so.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

Once again, I apologize to Nicolae for bogging his string down with one of my rhizomes. But points have come up in my reading of Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity that apply to yesterday’s rhizome as well as the original question:

“Can philosophy have any rules?”

“The vocabulary of self-creation is necessarily private, unshared, unsuited to argument. The vocabulary of justice is necessarily public and shared, a medium for argumentative exchange.” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 63-64). Kindle Edition.

And I think this has application to Nicolae and Tom’s proposal that it should be about social justice as well as my proposal concerning the import of Play. Basically, Rorty starts the book by pointing towards the historical conflict between private and public approaches towards philosophy and culture in general: the private being about self creation and the public being about social justice, both of which must use language games that are incommensurable. And his solution is to simply accept the incommensurability while looking at the various language games as tools designed for various tasks:

“This book tries to show how things look if we drop the demand for a theory which unifies the public and private, and are content to treat the demands of self-creation and of human solidarity as equally valid, yet forever incommensurable.” –Ibid (different page….

And we can apply the distinction to the revised model I offered yesterday:

And when I talk about Play, what I’m mainly talking about lies at the Private side of the spectrum. Of course, my critics would be perfectly within their right in noting the bourgeoisie nature of Play given the esoteric relation the private has with Metaphysics: that which seems to work in the ivory tower of the academic/gods eye perspective and which would seem opposed to the informal data of the personal/anecdotal. I could hardly not begrudge a Habermas their resistance to my position on Play.

What I would argue in my defense, though, is that we are an evolving species and that Play plays an important role in that process. Once again: we started as simple organisms with scattered nervous systems that coalesced into central nervous systems that developed a bud that budded into the very brain that allows us to do what we are doing here. In that process, we started with a competitive mode that worked from immediate self interest to a cooperative mode in which we began to see it in our interest to look out for the interest of others. But the cooperative mode did not displace the competitive one; it developed alongside the fading usefulness of it in the face of the negative consequences it created. Think here of Global Capitalism and man-made climate change.

It is in this need to facilitate the evolutionary gravitation from the competitive to the cooperative that I see the value of Play along with the more public uses of philosophy. Think, for instance, of the Play involved in our dreams. Our brain basically engages in a kind of inventory turned into bricolage. It randomly forms hybrids of various memories until those hybrids result in something new, forms patterns that seduces it and that it stores in order to repeat them in different ways. And let us note here the scientifically backed theory concerning the role that dreams play in brain plasticity.

So it seems no wonder that philosophers like Rorty and Deleuze would emphasize the philosophical import of the arts (a form of public dreaming/Play (like they do: to facilitate and accelerate our evolution as a species for the sake of saving our species.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

Contrary to previous issues I may have had with Rorty (the suggestion that it was the equivalent of going back to Ginsberg’s Howl in poetry (I find myself fumbling around at the edges of my comfort zone in his Essays on Heidegger and Others. The main thing to put in mind here is that these quotes are from the essay in which Rorty attempts to pinpoint the pragmatic aspect of Heidegger while Heidegger, himself, attempted to distance himself from pragmatism. At the same time, it has given me a glance into the deeper implications of pragmatism.

"We change them [the Kantian categories] (as, for example, we changed from an Aristotelian to a Newtonian understanding of space and time) whenever such a change enables us better to fulfill our desires by making things more readily manipulitable.

Once we take this final step, once human desires are admitted into the criterion of "truth", the last remnants of the Platonic idea of knowledge as contact with an underlying nonhuman order disappear. We have become pragmatists."

Starting with the simple implications at work here, I would first note the suggestion that the revolutionary aspect of pragmatism lies in its willingness to accept the role that desire (what I like to call resonance and seduction (plays in our philosophical assertions: the fact (and may the wrath of Strunk rest in its grave (that, contrary to the highest hopes of scientism and the analytics, there is simply no way around it. The nuance and subtlety of it lies in connecting this with the recognition that language is not just a signifier/signified relationship, but more so (that is if we look at it in evolutionary terms (an act we engage in with other members of our species in order to achieve certain effects. And in this sense of it we can see the pragmatic overlap between Rorty’s pragmatism and the pragmatism of Deleuze.

At the same time, I would point out Rorty’s distance from Heidegger (that is as I understand it (in that Heidegger took this model as a kind of unavoidable downward escalator from Plato to Pragmatism. Heidegger saw it as a degradation to the technological frame of mind: that which saw everything around it as something to be utilized. Heidegger opposed to this technological frame of mind the import of Being. This is why he emphasized the import of the poetic approach to philosophy. The problem was, out of his ambition to touch history, he turned the poetic approach into a kind of mystical and esoteric hierarchy in which he would serve as the high priest.

In order to appreciate this, we only need look at the uses that such French writers like Deleuze, Foucault, and Lacan put obscurity in exposition to as compared to that of Heidegger’s. For the French, it was basically a matter of writing in the language they were comfortable in based on their own processes in the hope that their readers would extract (steal even (for the sake of what they could use for their own processes. As Barthes put it: writerly text. This would be the democratic approach. Heidegger, however, was more authoritarian and hierarchal in that he saw his obscure exposition as something you had to study hard in order to reach the level he was at. In other words: he clearly had a guru complex –much like Manson and Hitler did. This would be the authoritarian approach. And as Rorty described Heidegger: a swharzhaug hick.

And he should have known better as Rorty points out describing Heidegger:

"That is to say: Being, which Plato thought of as something larger and stronger than us, is there only as long as as we are here. The relation between it and us are not power relations."

In other words, we cannot, as Heidegger recognized, separate our being from Being. Still, Heidegger, out of a mystical ambition, attempted to achieve guru status by recognizing it when, in fact, all talk of Being is little more than an act we engage in order to achieve a given end: guru status in the case of Heidegger.

I hope I haven’t totally fucked this up.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

“To say that it [literature] is more fruitful is just to say that, when you weigh the good and the bad the social novelists have done against the good and bad the social theorists have done, you find yourself wishing that there had been more novels and less theory.” –from Rorty’s Essays on Heidegger and Others

I would first offer one criticism before I throw myself in with Rorty. This isn’t totally fair in that it seems to be the theory itself that caused the problems. But as I like to say: ideology (therefore theory (does nothing; people, on the other hand, do. And we can assume here that he is mainly reacting to what happened in communist countries under the banner of Marx. But the atrocities committed were not the result of theory itself. They were, rather, the result of baser impulses reading what they wanted into theory and using that to do what they would have naturally done without the theory. This is the result of trickle-down nature of theory –that which always involves misinterpretation. For instance, Marxism did not exterminate 6 million plus people. (Marx would have been appalled.) Stalin did. And I would note this for all the American Republicans that happen to read this. When the Russian people voted in Stalin to bring in the communist revolution, they did so for very same reason that many Americans vote in Republicans: he seemed, being an ex-military man, like the tight-fisted can-do kind of guy that could get the job done.

That said, I tend to agree with Rortys nominalist sentiment here in that, first of all, literature (as well as cinema (does tend to have more effect on the general population for the very reason he describes: it gives us an opportunity to get into the lives of people unlike us; it allows for empathy which, to me, is the only moral or ethical code we need work by. But more importantly, to me at least, it confronts the issue of theoretical inertia: the tendency of a body to resist a change in motion. This involves static inertia (a body standing still (or dynamic: a body in motion. And from a nominalist perspective we have to work in between the two as concerns social and political policy. On one hand, we have theoretical laziness (static inertia (which we can see in Stalin and Trump and his followers. On the other, we have theoretical overreach (such as can sometimes be seen in Zizek and extreme leftist interpretations in which the eight-ball being black takes on sinister connotations (I actually heard this theory posed (that have no practical application to the problems at hand. Now granted: we need people to think a little more. This is pointed out in American talk shows in which people are offered questions about actual facts (geographical, political as concerns our system (and get them wrong; or, in the case of Jimmy Kimmel, asked to comment on false information to which the respondents act as if they are true. But I personally don’t need every worker in the world to read Das Kapital in order to know they are being exploited.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the conceptual play of theory. It’s what we turn to philosophy for. Our poetry. But when it comes to social and political policies, we need to set our esoteric egos aside, give up the ether-speak, and start speaking clearly in terms of real world solutions to real world problems. We simply cannot expect everyone to rise to the level of philosophical discourse. Therefore, it is up to us to disseminate it. It's what we're made to do.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

Some thoughts on Homophobia and Prison Sex from the Perspective of a Heterosexual Male:

We can, first of all (and from the feel of it: the hysteria involved, assume that it is a form of neurosis in a very Freudian sense. As I often like to joke: it always feels like someone so busy trying to convince everyone else that they’re not gay that you’re never really sure they have convinced their selves. *Whenever confronted with it (homophobia in men, I’m always tempted to ask them to engage in a thought experiment:

If you were trapped on a desert island and knew there was no one around to witness anything you do and were physically capable, wouldn’t you at least be tempted to give yourself oral sex –that is assuming that you are either part of the 90% of males that admit to masturbation or the 5% who are liars.

(And I would digress here into Kant’s argument that masturbation is a greater evil than suicide. This assertion, of course, was likely the result of his neo-classicism (his rather sterile style (rooted in his likely genetically determined a-sexuality. It was not a product of will as he would prop his categorical imperative up on.)

Of course a lot of men, especially of the less enlightened kind, would break into a frenzy of denial because they would assume that I was asking them to admit they were, in some subconscious capacity, gay. But I wouldn’t. I would argue that actually doing so would be little more than a more pleasant form of masturbation. It would basically be prison sex. And there is a difference.

The point is that while heterosexual males tend to do a lot of giddy squirming around about sex between two men, they are completely oblivious to what the real problem is for them: the tender acts of love, the soft touches, the caressing, and pillow talk that they succumb to with women. This is why a lot of those same men will claim to be turned on when two women engage in such behavior. It just seems more natural. And when they claim to be offended by that, it will generally be because they don’t like the idea of losing a potential sex partner.

The neurotic aspect of it lies in the fact that those same type of men are prone to engaging in the same type of tender behaviors when it comes to their newborn sons or in scenarios of war.*Getting back to point I previously made:

“As I often like to joke: it always feels like someone so busy trying to convince everyone else that they’re not gay that you’re never really sure they have convinced their selves. “

:we can see the neurosis at work by comparing two movies that addressed the issue: American Beauty and Bully. In American Beauty, the homophobic neo-Nazi neighbor (played by Chris Cooper (ended up attempting to kiss Kevin Spacy’s character. And as much as I liked the movie, this scene came off as a little heavy handed. The far more subtle and effective portrayal of it came in Bully in which the bully (played by Nick Stahl –in an excellent performance (took a lot of pleasure in forcing his friend to perform in gay clubs and videoing gay men while having no problem with raping women. He, for instance, shows the videos of gay men to a friend and laughs about it as if to say (given his obvious psychopathy (I dare you to call me a queer. His character basically struggled to make it seem like prison sex (it was about power after all (while showing signs of OCD, as well as conflict, in the obsessive way in which he washed his hands.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

"Marx's theory of historical repetition, as it appears notably in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, turns on the following principle which does not seem to have been sufficiently understood by historians: historical repetition is neither a matter of analogy nor a concept produced by the reflection of historians, but above all a condition of historical action itself. Harold Rosenberg illuminates this point in some fine actors or agents can create only on condition that they identify themselves with figures from the past. In this sense, history is theater: 'their action became a spontaneous repetition of an old role... It is the revolutionary crisis, the compelled striving for "something entirely new", that causes history to become veiled in myth...'" – from Gille Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition

I first note here how Deleuze is at his most accessible when he works in the domain (that is in terms of the philosophical spectrum (of the social/political. And as I have pointed out, he seems to have worked from the more superficial of the social/political to the more metaphysical/ontological (that is via the epistemological/logical (which, as I see it, gives license to work in a similar manner as concerns Difference and Repetition.

That said, and at the risk of taking this off topic (that is as concerns Deleuze (and bogging it down in the more superficial: the social/political, I would like to focus this on the phenomenon of Trump in America.

As I have said before, while rock stars seem to have Anti-Christ complexes, demagogues tend to have Christ complexes. And to give you a sense of what I’m getting at, I would point to the semiology of the concert. A rock star (that is when they have reached rock star status (will give a show that involves a lot of pretty and expensive toys. It is as if they are saying: look at my toys, look at my power. At the same time, given the negative associations attributed to rock stars (the idea that they may be worshipping the devil (there is always room for question. And it is always as if they are asking you to question it: that antichrist aura they take on.

Now compare that to country music which uses the same technology. Same message: look at my toys; look at my power. But in this case you’re expected to look at it as the American Dream fulfilled. And should you question it (much as the Dixie Chicks did (you will be rejected from the in-crowd.

Trump, of course, fancies his self a rock star. He is the guy shooting straight from the hip and to which everyone is listening –by which I mean his fans: likely a lot of displaced tea partiers. But his main appeal is that of a beer table demagogue: the loud mouth at a bar table telling everyone what he would do if he had (like a corporate CEO (control of the country. Of course, fancy is, at this point, already playing a role. But where the Christ-complex comes in to it is in him thinking he has broken through the veil of deception and having seen the simple answer to everything. And this is common among republicans. I mean what was Bush Jr. but a frat boy with a Christ complex: he thought he was going to save the world from the evil of the middle east and Islamic radicalism. But in Trumps case, the evil he is going to save us from is immigration. He thinks of himself as a kind of revolution. But:

"According to Marx, repetition is comic when it falls short -that is, when instead of leading to metamorphosis and the production of something new, it forms a kind of involution, the opposite of an authentic creation."

Trump is basically in the same Land of the Lotos Eaters as his followers. He avoids (a kind of denial (the real issue at work in the world: the fact that you cannot have a handful of people feasting at the table and expecting everyone else to fight for the crumbs and not expect the problems we are having. He, basically, offers more of the same –as most republicans do. And, granted, Hillary is also in the land of lotus eaters. But of the two, who are you more likely to change their way of thinking: Trump who is so immersed in Capitalism as to not be able to see beyond it; or Hillary who actually tried to create a healthcare system that acted outside of Capitalism?

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

I would first point out a point made in D&G’s A thousand Plateaus (or was it Anti-Oedipus?(:

A book does not mirror the world. It forms a rhizome with it.*In my present immersion in Gille Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition which has been a process of bouncing between not only Deleuze’s book, but Joe Hughes and James Williams’ reader guides as well, I am starting to see (or crystallize (two distinct takes on the book. It’s like what I have described before: several writers describing different books under the same title.

Hughes’ book seems to focus on the doctrine of the faculties: Deleuze via Kant’s description of how we move from immediate experience to thought: the genesis of understanding. Williams, on the other the other hand (and this is the most telling), seems to be looking backwards from Logic of Sense. His main focus seems to be on the interaction of series, events, and individuation (that founded on chancing. This, in turn, leads me to believe that Hughes, as well, cannot offer a PURE interpretation of Difference and Repetition: that is pure of the other books that Hughes has read and the concepts from them that attach their selves to his interpretation.

And Deleuze, himself, has referred to the deferred systems of meaning involved with any given system as well as infinite regress. And I’m guessing this is exactly the dynamic that Deleuze hoped to spread. He, having never been certain or clear on what it was he was approaching (that is given the evanescent nature of it), wanted to disseminate that experience of uncertainty: that experience of being almost there while never truly having it: like that French Mademoiselle who seems to be within your reach yet pulls away when you try to approach her. Think Kafka chick here.*The main point here is that if anyone is to hope to get a taste of understanding as concerns Difference and Repetition, it must, by its very nature, require an acquaintance with other books Deleuze has written as well as books written about him AND books written by those who influenced him. It is as if he is inviting us to look for the overlaps (the individuations (that occur between the series and events attached to Difference and Repetition. Once again:

A book does not mirror the world. It forms a rhizome with it.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

“In his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, Lacan elaborates the distinction between two types of contemporary intellectual, the fool and the knave….

….In short, the right-wing intellectual is a knave, a conformist who refers to the mere existence of the given order as an argument for it, and mocks the left on account of its ‘utopian’ plans; which necessarily lead to catastrophe; while the left-wing intellectual is a fool, a court jester who publically displays the lie of the existing order, but in a way which suspends the performative efficiency of his speech.” –From Slavoj Zizek’s The Plague of Fantasies

Now as most of us of the boards (those of the intellectually and creatively curious kind (know, a philosophy is only as useful to us as it is useful to us: in other words, it only works to the extent that we can apply it to our everyday reality at whatever level of advancement that happens to be at. And this is one of those instances in which Zizek is exceptional in fulfilling that criterion –especially as concerns the type of dynamics and M.O.’s (methods of operation (we see on the boards .But I would start by first pointing to the two jokes that Zizek uses as analogical to the two dynamics.

That of the fool is about two peasants, a husband and wife, walking along a dirt road when they encounter a tarter. The tarter tells the husband he is going to rape his wife while the husband, at the threat of death, will hold his balls so that they don’t get dirty. After the tarter does what he said he would, and rides away, the husband laughs. The wife, indignant, asks how he could laugh when she had just been raped, to which the husband responds that he let the tartar’s balls drag in the dirt.

That of the knave is about a man who goes to a bar and has a monkey that keeps running up on the counter and dipping his balls in his drink. When the man questions the bartender about it, the bartender refers him to the singing violinist there for entertainment. The man asks him:

“Do you know why that monkey keeps dipping his balls in my drink?”

:to which the entertainer smiles, says ‘sure, starts strumming his violin and sings:

“Why does that monkey keep dipping his balls in my drink….”

Corny jokes, I know. But they do capture the two dynamics at work here. But in order to crystallize here, I would offer my own analogy (or joke if you will (as concerns the Democratic and Republican politicians. When a democratic politician approaches you and tells you to bend over, they at least give you the promise of a reach around –which they will eventually have to fulfill in some lesser capacity if the promise is to hold any water. The Republican, on the other hand, will simply tell you to bend over because, if you don’t, everyone goes horny. Corny joke again, I admit. But while fashionable cynicism keeps making the argument that there is no difference between the two, I would argue that it is a difference (given the political system we have (between putting up some resistance to the emerging aristocracy/oligarchy and just bending over, pointing to our asses, and saying “just put it there.”

And we see the knave dynamic all over FOX News. I see it especially in shows like Red Eye which, in all honesty, I have only seen (my friend at work always has it on (and not actually heard what they are talking about. But I can see it all over it (and I may be wrong but doubt it: this kind of in-crowd dynamic in which all efforts at actually making things better are dismissed based on what the commentators can make snide remarks about, a lot of misdirects (straw men and red herrings (from the very real sufferings that leftist fools are attempting to address.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.

Unfortunately, for me (maybe not so much the unfortunate souls on Politics Prime who have had to deal with my rants), tonight’s run ends this particular immersion. And it is unfortunate for me in that last night’s debate seemed to offer quite a lot of material for exploration: a reading of what seems to be going between the lines as concerns Trump’s arguments that skirts the line of semiology.

What I would mainly focus on is his attack on her about the fact that regardless of what policy she supported, she seems, after 20+ years in politics, to have failed to implement them. Now what we mainly need to note here is that Trump was at a decided advantage in that while we have a public record as concerns Hillary’s political accomplishments, we have none as concern’s Trump’s. This is always (and inherently (the incumbent’s disadvantage. Of course, what it always fails to acknowledge is how likely it is that the newcomer (in this case Trump (due to systemic imperatives (will likely fail to do everything they promise –that is if not more so. This came to the surface when Hillary pointed out that the reason she didn’t pass a particular policy is because she was Senator under a Republican president that had “veto power”. But really telling of how clueless Trump is was his response: she could of done it if she really wanted to.

Now I really need you to think about that and how indicative it was of Trump’s either ignorance of how the political system actually works or the fantasy world he is living in, one in which everything is simply a matter of the will to do it.

The latter seems the more likely to me. And the reason I say this is that Trump’s main appeal is to the fancy of his followers. If you look at it, it has basically been a kind of Quentin Tarintino revenge fantasy in which those nasty immigrants finally “get theirs”. But more important here is the fantasy he is appealing to of the so-called “career politician” (a buzz-term that career politicians tend to throw at other politicians) in order to make himself seem, somehow, more pure or authentic. He basically paints Hillary as someone sitting around in private, twiddling their fingers, and croaking:

“First I’m going to tell them what they want to hear. Then when I get in, I’m going to do whatever I want.”

It’s a popular notion. But that doesn’t make it true. Basically what Trump is attempting to do is paint Hillary as purely self indulgent (based on a mythology (when he has shown himself to be as about as self indulgent as any politician could possibly be.

But Trump is not as problematic to me as his followers. They, for some absurd reason, consider him an advocate for the working man when the only solution I’ve seen him offer for outsourcing is tax-cuts for the rich (to draw jobs back to the states (and deregulation. In other words: Trump’s only solution to the problems created by globalism is giving the rich more of what they want:

To basically reduce us to the same conditions as third world countries.

Humble yourself or the world will do it for you -it was either Russell or Whitehead. I can't remember which.

When I was young, I use to think the world was a messed up place so i was pissed off a lot. But now that I'm older, I know it is. So I just don't worry about it. -John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten).

Anarchy through Capitalism -on a flyer thrown out during a Kottonmouth Kings concert.

First we read, then we write. -Emerson.

All poets are damned. But they are not blind. They see with the eyes of angels. -William Carlos Williams: in the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl.

You gotta love that moment when the work is done and all that is left to do is drink your beer and sip your jager and enjoy what you've done. It's why I do and love it.

I refuse to be taken seriously.

Once again: take care of your process and others will take care of theirs. No one needs a guru. Just someone to jam with.